3 things learned from the Miami Dolphins taxing loss to the Vikings

Mike McDaniel is good at what he does but he needs to be better than he has been.

Mike McDaniel has a very good offensive mind. Not sure if I’ll call him a genius because that word gets thrown around to anyone that lines up a player at a different position way too often. Plus, I’ve never seen his Mensa card. But he knows what he’s doing.

But there have been a few moments over the last few weeks that have left me annoyed because everyone in the world, including me, would have played the situation differently. Yes, it’s easy to play the results but even if these decisions ended up going in Miami’s favor, I would have still told you it wasn’t the right decision.

This week’s brutal decision was looking to get points with 25 seconds left starting at the Dolphin’s own 10-yard-line. There simply was no good reason not to take the knee into halftime especially since the Miami Dolphins were getting the ball to start the half.

The Miami Dolphins, after enduring another Jason Sanders missed field goal(foreshadowing) got another defensive stop. The Vikings punted and Miami got the ball at the 10. The score was 7-3 and it was one of those scores where you could have said to yourself “this could be worse.” Just go into halftime, regroup, do whatever you do in there and come out on fire and rejuvenated in the 3rd quarter.

Nope, McDaniel decided to let Teddy Bridgewater sling it and a ball gets to Jaylen Waddle’s chest, pops up into the air, and gets picked. The Vikings go a few yards and get a field goal. The score is 10-3 and it didn’t need to be.

I just don’t understand it. The odds were so not good that Teddy was going to get the Dolphins in field goal range in under 25 seconds even with the two timeouts so why force it? Is it a dumb analytic thing? I don’t know, I just know that I hated every part of it.